Double Peak - Today's Run With Pictures

The Catalina Marathon is four and a half weeks away and instead of the normal volume build-up I have used in the past when training for marathons and ultras, I am trying a new technique of keeping my weekly volume at about 40-50 miles per week, but doing most of my runs in the hills around my house. My weekly mileage is about 80 percent hills and trails and 20 percent flat road, so hopefully that will give me the strength to not get too worn out on the Catalina course, although those last three miles of steep downhill are going to hurt.

In the past I have built running volume up steadily, adding a few miles every week to my long run and backing off every fourth week. This gave me a slow and steady build and included a handful of 20+ mile runs. I wasn't able to do that for this marathon because I got talked into signing up at the last minute and I only had about six weeks to prepare. It really didn't take much to convince me to sign up, I looked at some of the pictures of the course and I couldn't say no. I even convinced my wife it would be a nice 3-day getaway from the kids. I only signed her up for the 10k because I didn't want her to be bored while I did the marathon. I didn't ask her about this beforehand; I just figured she would want something to do, but I guess she just wanted to sleep in and relax, who knew?

One of my favorite local routes is to run to the top of Double Peak and down the other side. It's about a four mile loop if I start from my front door. I wanted to get my run in before the rains came this morning, so I grabbed my camera and headed out for my Double Peak run.

When we first moved here about five years ago, the hill was only accessible by foot or mountain bike, but the city has since paved a road to the top and put an adventure playground, amphitheater and picnic area in at the top of the hill. I was a little disappointed and thought it would lead to overcrowding, but it has been nice for the community and it has stayed relatively quiet at the top.

This is one of those runs where you can't really get an idea of how steep it is from the pictures, but suffice it to say that I used to have to walk large parts of this route and I still struggle to do the steepest part without walking (as seen in my video below).